In 1871 his salary was raised to $75
per week. When the Cyclopedia was revised he was paid $250 per month
for extra work on it. More than a million four hundred and sixty
thousand volumes of the two editions have been sold, and a small
royalty secured to the editors on each volume.
With prosperity Mr. Ripley never forgot his obligations. The old score
of debt was wiped out and paid. He was free, and as a man of letters
revelled in that which had been his youthful ideal.
When a student at Harvard College he wrote to his father, "I know that
my peculiar habits of mind, imperfect as they are, strongly impel me to
the path of intellectual effort; and if I am to be at any time of use
to society or a satisfaction to myself or my friends, it will be in the
way of some retired literary situation where a fondness for books will
be more requisite than the busy, calculating mind of a man in the
business part of the community." Thus was one of his youthful dreams
fulfilled. His capacity for work seemed unbounded. "He gave all his
time and all his energy to literary criticism, and spending on it, too,
the full resources of a richly furnished mind and infusing into it the
spirit of a broad and noble training.
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